The Chicago Tribune - September 20, 1995

BEIJING: Hong Kong's vote this week for more autonomy and fewer restraints from Beijing has set off alarms in the Communist Party hierarchy, which fears its vision of a Greater China may be evaporating in the rush toward democracy. The crushing defeat of the three senior pro-Beijing candidates illustrated to their masters in the Chinese capital that a similar fate could befall them should free elections ever spread to the mainland from Hong Kong.

Worse, the British colony's overwhelming choice of democratic candidates over pro-Chinese ones could be duplicated when Taiwan goes to the polls in March. Taipei's first democratic election is also seen as an opinion poll on whether the island should reunify with mainland China or go it alone.

"What worries the Chinese more than the vote in Hong Kong is how it will affect other territories which the motherland claims as its own," a Western diplomat in Beijing said.

Democratic fervor, perhaps the best bulwark against Beijing's acquisitive ambitions, could reinvigorate Tibet, whose people continue to demand autonomy and the return of their exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama. It could also spread to the Central Asian provinces, where Turkic Muslim people have long chafed under Chinese rule.

It has already sprouted inside China, where an ever-growing number of the 35 million victims of World War II are demanding compensation payments from Japan, despite a tacit agreement between Tokyo and the late Mao Tse-tung that loans from Japan would keep the infamies of the war closeted.

Old Communists are aware that the 1919 May 4 Revolution, on whose apron strings the party eventually rode to power, began when students and intellectuals boycotted Japanese goods.

Meanwhile, China's neighbors are planning to join forces to confront Beijing's unilateral sovereignty claim to the Spratly archipelago, which is touted to be rich in natural gas and oil. China also claims the entire South China Sea as "historic waters."

According to Beijing, the China Sea is part of Greater China, and its islands and reefs are marked on military maps as belonging to Zeng Mo Ansha, China's southern territories.

With problems at its doorsteps, Beijing is still puzzled by Washington's decision to allow Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui to visit the U.S., despite a promise to keep senior Taiwanese leaders out. Worse, the goals of a pro-Taiwan American lobby-which wants closer commercial ties with Taiwan and the island's readmission into the United Nations-are seen by China as a slap in the face, another example of foreign arrogance and perfidy.

Beijing's reaction to the Hong Kong vote was swift and blunt. Even before the last ballots for the new Legislative Council in Hong Kong had been counted Monday, a spokesman for the Chinese government reiterated that the council would be dissolved the minute Beijing takes over the colony July 1, 1997.

"The Chinese government's stand is firm on the elections and will not be affected by the election results," the official New China news agency reported in a dispatch carried by all major dailies Tuesday.

The agency, a mouthpiece for official thinking, lambasted the election procedures as dubious and unfair. It also said only one-third of the electorate had voted, less than the turnout four years ago.

It was not the first time China flexed its muscles this year. Two nuclear tests coupled with recent naval maneuvers and missile tests in the Strait of Formosa were only partially intended to improve Beijing's military clout. Asian military attaches believe their principal mission was to intimidate China's neighbors and a Taiwan which China's Communists have always considered a renegade province.

Following more and more talk of independence in Taipei, which seeks a seat in the UN and membership in the World Trade Organization, the Chinese navy has announced further offshore exercises while the government keeps reiterating its threat to take the island by force if peaceful reunification fails.

All of China's aspirations are not immediate. At a military installation near Beijing, Liu Huaqing, vice chairman of the powerful Military Commission, reportedly told senior officers in August to "cool" their ambitions in the South China Sea after the navy's occupation of reefs and shoals in the Spratlys caused a regional rumpus and a confrontation with the Philippines.

"The Spratlys are a difficult and complicated issue. It might take between 10 and 20 years to resolve the dispute," Liu told the officers. Six countries, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Sultanate of Brunei claim sovereignty over the Spratlys. Liu was by no means rolling back Chinese ambitions. He urged the officer corps to make sure China's claims are reflected in national maps and textbooks as The Southern Territory.

He also called on them to continue building structures on the submerged reefs since, under the law of the sea, no reef or shoal can have offshore territorial waters. However, with a permanent structure above the water, a reef can become an island and therefore eligible to a 12-mile limit. "We must build a lot and we must improve our presence in the area," Liu allegedly said. "But let's go slowly."